Time Together
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Minutes after Donna's brainwashing, she finds herself in a familiar place with a familiar face and an all-too-familiar dilemma. Oneshot.


**_I'M NOT NORMALLY ONE FOR DONNA-BRAINWASHING ANGST, BUT I HAD TO GET AN IDEA OUT OF MY HEAD. I WON'T TELL YOU THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT WHICH LED ME HERE, SO I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY IT ENOUGH NOT TO CARE! PLEASE REVIEW - REVIEWS MAKE THE WORLD GO 'ROUND!_**

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I'd be lying horribly if I said I didn't enjoy it, knowing things that he didn't know, and being a half-step ahead. Sure, I'd been a super-being for a bit, and been able to work out how to save the universe alongside him, but now, I was pretty much back to normal. And I knew stuff that he didn't! Childish as it was, that was flippin' brilliant!

Of course, it wasn't all peaches and cream. Our final meeting was preceded by the single most gut-wrenching, horrific moment of my life. In fact, I have come to look upon it as the _last_ moment of my life.

"I was going to be with you forever," I had said, tears streaming down my face.

"I know."

"Rest of my life, traveling in the TARDIS. The Doctor Donna. Oh, oh I can't... I can't go back! Don't make me go back! Doctor, please don't make me go back!"

"Oh, Donna Noble, I am so sorry. But we had the _best_ of times. The best. Goodbye."

And even before I started screaming, I knew from the look on his face that in the end, this would be harder on him than it was on me.

"No, please, no! No! No!" I begged. I cried and pleaded, but he did not back down, bless him.

They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. For me, it was only my time with the Doctor. Same difference.

And then for a moment, the world was black. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a courtyard. I looked about, and there were a few people milling about, looking to be in various states of confusion. Even though the building in front of me looked like the British Museum, and even though I was back to normal human brain-power, I did have a sort of inkling where I was. Not a total awareness, just a feeling.

I walked up the steps and went inside. The place was more crowded than I'd bargained for, but then upon consideration, that was no surprise. A large sign in front of me read _Harold Saxon Exhibit: The Horrors of the Master_, with an arrow that pointed to the left. A great many people were either headed to or away from that exhibit, which made perfect sense. Another sign read _Torchwood: The Corners of Your Mind,_ and seemed to lead a different direction. Quite a few people milled in and out of that room as well.

But the sign that called to me said _Time Lords and Brainwashing_. I followed the arrow into a dark room, panelled with what seemed to be photographs. The track lighting illuminated them perfectly, rather like an exhibit I'd seen in Paris on the early days of photography.

There weren't very many people in the room, and those who were there seemed to be engrossed in the photographs. However, upon further inspection, I realised that they weren't photographs at all, but almost magically moving pictures, like in the _Harry Potter_ films. I was not surprised to find that I was in quite a few of them. My most vivid memories of life with the Doctor, there on display in this sort of museum of recall, and I stopped to watch one of them.

I was in my flapper get-up with a giant magnifying glass in my hand (blimey, that looked daft!), being attacked by a giant wasp. I smiled slightly at the memory, knowing that I'd been terrified, but also knowing that everything had worked out all right in the end. I watched myself tell the Doctor what I'd seen, and I watched Mrs. Christie rebuke me for being frightened of an insect.

I moved to the next picture. I watched myself attempt in vain to save a little boy from the fires of Pompeii. This was a memory I did not relish – I was annihilated that day, knowing the Doctor and I had killed twenty-thousand people.

As I stepped to the next picture, I glanced about the room again. Something caught my eye, and my breath stopped short. Now _this _was surprising. A familiar figure was here with me, in an exhibit about Time Lord brainwashing. He was wearing tweed instead of pin-stripes, grey instead of brown, dress shoes instead of trainers, a bow-tie instead of the usual cravat, but it was him. Same unruly hair, same deep brown eyes, same ridiculously thin body.

I walked toward him with resolve. He hadn't seen me, so he jumped a bit when I said "Hello, Doctor."

He regarded me with eyes as large as saucers. "Donna! Well... it's nice to see you!"

"Yeah, you too!"

We hugged. Then there was a bit of an awkward silence. Silence is not a norm for either one of us, and so... he spoke first.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Well, I'm here," I answered.

He wasn't really smiling now. "Yes, I see that. I'll assume that I had something to do with that."

"You're the only Time Lord I know," I replied, though I was sorry I had said it as soon as it was out of my mouth. "No brainwashing from any others."

He stared at me with concern. I thought he might be trying to decide whether to ask the question that was brewing in his great brain. I took the opportunity to wonder why he was wearing such a strange outfit. He basically dressed like a late-twentieth, early-twenty-first century gentleman most of the time. What was with the turn-of-the-century garb?

In the end, he decided to ask. "How did this happen?"

"You know. Human – Time Lord megastasis," I told him matter-of-factly.

"Excuse me?"

"Megastasis," I answered. "It's when I touch your severed hand and create a new you, and the new you is part human and I'm part Time Lord."

"My severed hand?"

"Yeah, you remember the severed hand, right?"

"Well, I had my hand chopped off a while back and grew a new one..."

"...and Captain Jack carried it about in a jar for a hundred years. Right." I was a bit puzzled that he wasn't aware of this.

"Captain Jack?"

Now I was exasperated. "Yes! Captain Jack! Tall American bloke, long coat, _really_ gorgeous?"

"Yes, yes, I know who he is," the Doctor said, his face scrunching up more and more, the more I spoke. "I haven't seen him since... well, I was a different man then."

"Well, anyway," I continued. "The point is, your hand was in a jar. I was in the TARDIS and the TARDIS was about to be barbequeued by the Daleks, when I touched the jar, and poof!"

"Poof?"

"Yes, poof! A new you!"

"And the new me was part human."

"Yes!"

"And you became part Time Lord."

"Yes!"

"You mean a _metacrisis_, not megastasis."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, whatever, mate. Look, I can't believe you're here!"

He ignored me. "Wait, Donna. The last time I saw you, you were wearing your wedding gown, and I left you off at your mother's house in Chiswick."

"Really? That was the last time you saw me? Are you sure?"

"Yes," he replied vigorously. "_Very_ sure. I know I'd remember meeting up with you again."

"Yeah, well, I changed my mind and decided to come with you after all. Look."

I led him over to the wall and showed him the memory of him lugging my suitcases from my car to the TARDIS. His face registered shock and confusion.

Then I tugged his arm, skipped Pompeii, and led him to my memory of taking out the Sontaran with one swift blow to the back of the neck. That had been bloody amazing! His mouth hung open as if he wanted to shout or squeal something, but could not.

He was incredulous, and turned to me looking desperate. "How can you be traveling with me? What happened to Martha Jones?" he practically shouted.

"She left you because she was in love with you."

His face went white with that comment. I did not understand the implications of that until a bit later.

"She went to work for UNIT," I said, showing him another picture. In it, Martha was speaking into a radio, commanding troops, and the Doctor and I were following her. "Actually, now we know UNIT can't be trusted, I think she's gone to work for Torchwood. I'm not sure."

"WHAT?" he really was shouting now, though no one in the room seemed to notice.

"Calm down, Doctor, it's fine."

"IT IS NOT FINE!" he shouted. "Do you know...? Torchwood is... THAT'S HOW ROSE...."

"Oh, she's fine too," I told him. "She found her way back, but now she lives in the parallel world with the other you." I gestured to another picture.

At that, he had to steady himself against the wall. He swallowed hard, and said, "Please don't show me that. I'll just take your word."

"Are you all right, Doctor?" asked, helping him get upright again.

"Yeah," he rasped. "Fine."

He let a few seconds pass while he seemed to catch his breath. Then he said, "So if there was a human – Time Lord metacrisis, that must mean that I had to wipe your mind."

"And here I am," I told him, shrugging.

"Oh dear," he sighed. "I'm not looking forward to that."

"Yeah, speaking of which, Doctor," I piped up. "How come you don't know any of this? I thought you were supposed to remember things here?"

He sighed. "Let's take a walk," he said.

I took his arm and he led me to the other side of the room. The room seemed to deepen by a hundred times, and suddenly the museum seemed to me a bit like the TARDIS, with its impossibly large interior.

"These are my memories, Donna," he said, gesturing to the images on the wall. I did not recognise the Doctor in any of them, but I knew that he had changed his face and body many times, and assumed that the various men I was seeing in the pictures, saving the day, were him.

"Nice scarf," I teased.

He smiled. "You haven't seen the celery boutanniere yet."

It felt like miles we walked. I chose not to inquire about the images of his children and grandchildren, family and home. I chose to look away from memories of the Time War. Finally, almost at the end of the hall, I recognised a face. It was Rose, standing near a man with large ears wearing a black leather jacket.

"Is that you?" I asked, tickled at seeing a recent image of the Doctor who wasn't quite yet _my _Doctor.

"That's me," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Not so very long ago."

We continued walking. At the last picture, he stopped. I watched.

An alien planet. The Doctor and Martha running for their lives. Laser blasts all around, land mines to trip them up. Finally, the two of them stumbled onto the TARDIS. The Doctor established that the enemy had not seen Martha's face, and then showed her a fob watch. He explained that his Time Lord consciousness would be stored in the watch, and his biology rewritten to match that of a human being. Then I watched him scream in agony as every cell in his body was altered by a helmet-like device. Nearby, Martha Jones stood and watched, sobbing.

"Interesting," I said. "You're here because you became human, and I'm here because I became a Time Lord."

"Life has a funny way," he said, staring at the images, almost without moving his lips.

"So what's Martha doing out there without you?" I needed to know.

"I dunno," he said, staring through me. "She's a servant now. Taking care of John Smith. Making his tea, folding his laundry, cleaning his washbasin..."

Only then did I understand why the revelation that Martha loved him had caused all the blood to go from his face earlier.

And then _all of it_ sort of clicked. He didn't know about any of the events I'd been discussing because when he lost his Time Lord memories and came here, they hadn't happened to him yet! I experienced a kind of euphoria at being able to see, as the Doctor could, how the timeline plays out, what will be, what was and what must not.

And then the dread set in.

Because I knew how this went. At some point, he stops being John Smith and goes back to his life as a Time Lord. And I knew this because later, he finds me again and eventually wipes my mind and brings me here.

Which meant that I was here forever, but the Doctor was not. He would leave me again. Memories of my travels with the Doctor could cause my brain to explode in the real world, and therefore, I was in the museum for the long haul – my family would see to that. But the Doctor was a temporary guest. The part of him that needed to remain locked away for the moment would eventually re-join the Time Lord consciousness and leave me here once more.

I worked all of this out, and then looked up. And there he was staring at me with that concerned expression, once again, five step ahead of me.

I sighed in resignation. "Show me some stuff from your celery boutanniere days before you go?"

He smiled sadly and took my hand. "Sure. This way."

And we walked back toward the earlier images to enjoy the time we had left.


End file.
